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GENEALOGY INFORMATION

Peter Kratzer House, Wengi bei Reichenbach, Switzerland

We have genealogy information available on 13,219 members of the Zeller (Switzerland and Ohio), Ward (South Carolina and Ohio), Galbraith (Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Ohio), Eckstein (Germany, Pennsylvania, and Ohio), Dähler (Switzerland and Ohio), and Kratzer (Switzerland and Ohio) families. Other surnames with over 80 individuals in our files are Stanley (Ohio, Virginia, and England, back to British, French, and Viking royalty), Vernon (Pennsylvania,, South Carolina, and Ohio), Whinery (Ohio). Matti (Switzerland and Ohio), and Pettit (Pennsylvania and Ohio). In Switzerland, our Zeller data are from citizenship in Zweisimmen, with some relatives in other Simmental towns. The Matti family also held their Swiss citizenship in Zweisimmen. The Kratzers held citizenship in Aeschi bei Spiez. They lived Wengi bei Reichenbach, and in other Kandertal villages. The Dähler family was from Seftigen and Wichtrach. All of these areas are in Canton Bern.

You can view our large Thomas Ward Jr. database with search capabilities at our Rootsweb site. This file also contains considerable data on our Swiss ancestors, as well as a variety of our other cousins. Very unfortunately, the current contemptable management of RootsWeb has decided to force errors into all of the files submitted to them. Hence, this destructive management has rendered our file incomplete and at times erroneous. I protest the destructive management of RootsWeb, who is ruining a formerly very valuable internet resource. They should be ashamed of themselves, but they appear to be shameless..

Zeller/Ward/Kratzer/Dähler/Eckstein Family File

You can also check out our database on Family Tree Maker, at::

Zeller/Ward/Eckstein/Dähler/Kratzer Genealogy Page

We also have a smaller Rootsweb database with information on 997 descendants of Thomas Ward Sr. of Abbeville District, South Carolina. We are certain that we are closely related to him, although it also seems certain that Thomas Ward Sr. is not the father of our ancestor Thomas Ward Jr. of Abbeville District, as you might expect from the Sr. and Jr. suffixes. Any information on Thomas Ward of Abbeville, either Sr. or Jr., will be very welcome.

Thomas Ward Sr. Family File - Abbeville District South Carolina

CREDITS: We thank the following individuals for their extensive work on the files that we have: Don Ward (deceased), who did a tremendous amount of work on the Peter Ward family; Nannette Pucci of Industry, PA, who is the top expert on the family of David Eckstein; Joyce Perkerson Poole of Augusta, GA, who is a wonderful expert on the family of Thomas Ward Sr. of Abbeville District, SC; Jim Ward of Tennessee for his amazing transcripts of the Ward Letters, and Gertrud Zürbrugg of Frutigen, Switzerland who was very valuable in tracing the history of the Kratzer family in Aeschi bei Spiez, Switzerland. George Zeller of Cleveland, OH did the research on the family of Barthome and Johannes Zeller of Zweisimmen, Switzerland, as well as a significant amount of work on the rest of our files.

DAVID ECKSTEIN, General George Washington's Bodyguard during the Revolutionary War

Eckstein served as George Washington's bodyguard following Hickey's Treason, when a prior bodyguard was executed for trying to poison General Washington's peas. General Washington's receipt book is on display in the Hummelstown, Pennsylvania Historical Society, with David Eckstein's signature prominently displayed in the book. Eckstein later served more than twenty years as the school teacher in Hummelstown.